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NEW ORLEANS About 50 people demonstrated in front of Mayor Ray Nagin's house today, demanding the reopening of public housing in New Orleans. Nagin was not present for the demonstration, which capped off a week of several major developments concerning public housing in the city. Before Hurricane Katrina, where were about three thousand apartments that typically rented for 85 dollars a month. During the week, Nagin sent a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, asking Secretary Alphonso Jackson to immediately place a thousand units into service and open an additional thousand units with in 90 days. Nagin also asked that 750 scattered sites, possibly using modular homes, be set up. On Friday, the National Housing Partnership Foundation announced it would build three thousand units in the New Orleans area by 2009 to help with the housing crisis.
The heyday of the conglomerate is long past. Despite a thriving nostalgia for the 1970s, the vast and sprawling industrial behemoths that characterized that age have seldom come back into fashion, and never for long. Now the mood has turned so wildly that the clamor is often not only to question the point of conglomerates, but to argue for their break-up. Conglomerates have taken a battering from management theorists, too, with many seeing diversification as a way for managers to build empires rather than a way to create value. And stock markets have taken to imposing a conglomerate discount, forcing firms such as Tyco International (Ticker: TYC) to break themselves up.
The case against conglomerates can be summed up in two words: size and complexity. Size is said to slow down decision-making; complexity to create confusion.
Australia's warships should built on home soil even if it costs more, a Senate committee has recommended. In its report on Australia's naval shipbuilding sector, the Senate foreign affairs defence and trade committee acknowledged that building locally may come at a cost premium. .
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